My life in London (and its environs). "Delusional if rather sweet" – Samira Ahmed

Smile Or Die / Endless Ocean 2

It’s been a very successful evening. I’ve written a song that I’m quite proud of*, even though the verse and the chorus do sound a bit welded together, like those cut and shut cars that come apart when you’re doing 70 on the motorway. It’s lovely when people who’s never driven use car metaphors, isn’t it?

It’s a bit belated but I thought I’d blog about the last two things I’ve written for newspapers. The first thing was a review of Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America And The World. It was a very forced review, proof-read at 4am with my brain screaming at me, demanding to do anything other than think about words, so I’m quite happy with how it came out. The other review was for the fish-based computer game, which I dismissively alluded to in one of my previous blog entries.

This was pretty exciting, as it got in the Guardian’s G2 section. It’s always good when things get in the G2, as the Guardian is a proper newspaper my grandma likes, and she can have a nice read of it, even if she’s only dimly aware of what a computer game is. Not that the Morning Star isn’t a proper newspaper, I just think she worries that by writing for it I’m hanging out with the wrong crowd, and am going to head off to South America to become a charismatic revolutionary leader. If only.

The review also appeared on guardian.co.uk, and for the first time I received a decent flurry of comments. Most of them were overwhelmingly negative, but heigh ho. That’s the internets for you. Or maybe I’m just shite. Either way, they would probably have been even more annoyed if I’d mentioned in my review that I maturely called my character ‘cockmaster’, which led to some saucy exchanges with my salty captain, who couldn’t dive anymore because he had the bends:

Aye aye, Captain Birdseye. I’ll investigate… YOUR PANTS.

It’s probably time I got myself one of those fancy professional journalist websites, with links to everything I’ve written. In the meantime, here is a lovely picture of my dive partner of choice, jism the dolphin.